February neuroscience and learning news

Welcome to a new feature on our blog – Sonic Learning’s monthly roundup of neuroscience and learning news on the Web.

Brain regions ‘tune’ activity to enable attentionResearchers at the Washington University School of Medicine believe they have discovered how the human brain is able to pay attention: by synchronising activity in different areas of the brain. This may explain attention deficits in individuals with brain injuries or those who have suffered from a stroke. Since activity in many areas of the brain are required for paying attention, damage to one or more of these areas – as is the case with stroke and brain injury sufferers – could negatively impact attentiveness .

Four tips to help you remember someone’s name
Forgetting someone’s name is an easy way to offend them – and yet names can be difficult to remember for many. What can be done? Is it a case of ‘some people are good with names, and some people aren’t’? While of course some may naturally excel at remembering names, it’s a skill all can improve upon. Here’s four tips to improve name recall.

How happiness boosts the immune system
Have you ever heard of psychoneuroimmunology? If you haven’t, you aren’t alone. It’s the relatively new field of uncovering how our moods connect with the physiology of the nervous and immune systems. Professor Steve Cole of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the University of California has published a string of papers documenting how negative mental states may affect us on a genetic level – even our ability to fight disease.

Neuroeducation – 25 Findings Over 25 Years
Educational neuroscience has been with us for 25 years. Here’s 25 things we’ve learned (our favourites: the discovery of brain plasticity and insights into dyslexia).

We hope you enjoyed our roundup. To stay up-to-date with what we’re discovering in neuroscience and learning, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.